Nets squander 17-point lead in 124-121 loss to Hawks despite Day’Ron Sharpe’s historic night
· Yahoo Sports
Mikel Brown Jr. had already rescued the Nets from a fourth-quarter scare.
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The rookie’s 3-pointer with 2:13 left put Brooklyn ahead 114-110, the third triple of a remarkable closing stretch from a young guard who missed his first seven shots.
The Nets had led the Atlanta Hawks all night. They were about to lose anyway.
Brooklyn unraveled in the final two minutes Saturday, surrendering 10 consecutive points and a 17-point lead in a 124-121 loss to the Hawks at State Farm Arena. The defeat spoiled a triple-double from Day’Ron Sharpe, one of Nolan Traoré’s strongest performances of the season and a fourth-quarter scoring surge from Brown. It also raised an uncomfortable question for head coach Jordi Fernández.
Why didn’t Traoré return for the fourth quarter?
The final collapse wasn’t abstract. With the Nets up 114-110, Sharpe grabbed a rebound off a missed Nickeil Alexander-Walker 3-pointer, only for Dyson Daniels to steal the ball. Onyeka Okongwu hit a 3-pointer with 1:44 left. Okongwu then blocked Sharpe at the rim, and Alexander-Walker sank two free throws to give Atlanta its first lead, 115-114, with 1:26 remaining.
Alexander-Walker added a transition layup, and Jalen Johnson’s three-point play pushed the margin to six. Danny Wolf hit a 3-pointer with 1.5 seconds remaining to pull Brooklyn within two, but Okongwu made a free throw to seal it.
It was a harsh ending for a team that had played with a level of offensive fluency rarely seen through its first eight games. Fernández moved Wolf into the starting lineup after his productive outing against Charlotte, replacing Chaney Johnson. The Nets responded by making 14 of 19 shots in a 37-point opening quarter. Six different players hit a 3-pointer, and Brooklyn led by as many as 17.
Traoré set the pace. He scored seven of Brooklyn’s first nine points and finished with 19 on 8-for-10 shooting, including two 3-pointers, with four steals and one turnover in just under 23 minutes. Wolf, making his first start of the season, grabbed seven defensive rebounds in his first nine minutes and finished with 11 points and nine boards.
Yet Traoré spent the entire fourth quarter on the bench. Fernández instead played Brown all 12 minutes, a decision that made sense on its own: Brown scored 13 of his 18 points in the period, making five of nine shots and three 3-pointers after an 0-for-7 start. He also slipped a pocket pass to Julius Randle for a tomahawk dunk that forced Quin Snyder to call timeout midway through the quarter.
What remains difficult to reconcile is why there was no room for Traoré as Atlanta closed the gap. Brooklyn’s most efficient guard watched the finish, and the Hawks scored 36 fourth-quarter points to the Nets’ 26. Brown’s comeback deserved the extended run. Traoré’s complete absence from the period deserves an explanation.
Sharpe, meanwhile, turned a surprise passing performance into a piece of franchise history. Three nights after setting a career high with eight assists against Charlotte, he recorded 13 against Atlanta, the most ever by a Nets center. He added 12 points and 10 rebounds for a triple-double. With Fernández staggering Randle and Michael Porter Jr., Sharpe found success directing dribble handoffs and finding cutters while Porter worked as a featured scorer.
Porter scored a team-high 25 points and grabbed nine rebounds. Randle added 19 points, eight assists and seven boards, although he committed six turnovers. Brooklyn had 29 assists overall, evidence of how much more effectively its offense shared the ball than it had during the season’s opening stretch.
That improvement couldn’t overcome what happened at the other end. The Nets committed 22 turnovers, which Atlanta converted into 28 points, and surrendered 70 points in the paint. The Hawks had 20 fast-break points to Brooklyn’s four and took 16 more shots. Johnson scored 30, while Alexander-Walker and Aaron Wiggins added 20 apiece. Atlanta did it on the second night of a back-to-back, following Friday’s win over Washington.
The finish carried an unwelcome resemblance to Monday’s loss to the Knicks, when Brooklyn entered the fourth quarter with a four-point lead and managed just 11 points in a 103-90 defeat. This time, the Nets had far more production and a series of encouraging individual performances. They still couldn’t close.
The loss dropped Brooklyn to 2-7 entering Sunday’s visit to Dallas, the second stop on a four-game road trip that continues Wednesday in New Orleans and next Saturday in Memphis. Egor Dëmin, who is recovering from a bone bruise, has already been ruled out against the Mavericks.
Fernández’s reshuffled Nets looked like a team beginning to discover how its pieces fit. At least early on. When the game got tight, they had enough talent to keep scoring. They didn’t make enough of the plays required to win.